counting down
by shineyma
Summary: Whoever his soulmate is, he's been holding on to her since his timer clicked on six years ago. Everything he's been through—with his family, with John, alone in that fucking forest—he's had her with him, carrying the promise of future happiness right there on his wrist. [Part one of the "before you fall" series] REVISED 2/17/16


A/N: Two things to note here: 1) I've never seen the movie that the soulmate timer concept is apparently based upon, so apologies if I got anything wrong. I just sort of took what I remembered from various fics and then made up the rest.  
2) I'm almost definitely messing up Ward's background here, because I only watched the flashbacks once, and it was a while ago. Apologies if anyone is offended by any inaccuracies.

Also, this is the first fic I've posted in quite a while, so please be gentle if you review!

**EDIT** 2/17/16: Nineteen months on, this fic-and _sometimes_, its sequel-make me cringe kind of a lot. As such, I'm undertaking a massive effort to revise and update both of them. (You can find more information about that here.) In the meantime, I hope you'll forgive any inconsistencies between this and the rest of the series; I promise, they'll be updated eventually, too.

* * *

Grant doesn't remember being told about soulmates.

It feels like something he's always known, like instinctual knowledge—like he was _born_ with the promise etched into his mind: that somewhere in the world is his other half, someone who's meant for him and for whom he's meant. It doesn't feel like something he had to be taught, that someone, somewhere will love him wholly and unconditionally.

Of course, he realizes as he gets older that that's not necessarily true. His parents are soulmates, and there's nothing wholehearted or perfect about their love. His father's cruelty to his mother is matched only by her cruelty to him; Grant watches them hurt each other, day in and day out, and feels sick.

His older brother, Christian, doesn't feel sick. Christian is _inspired_. He picks up on their parents' habits and, without a soulmate to torment, turns those habits on Grant and their little brother, Thomas. Their parents either don't notice or (more likely) just don't care. They let Christian get away with everything.

Grant does, too…but only once.

After that horrible day at the well—the day that teaches him _hate_—he promises himself that he will never again be like Christian or their parents. Thomas has nothing to fear from him, and neither does his soulmate. When he finds her (_if he finds her_, a nasty little voice in his head whispers, because Christian has been telling him for years that he doesn't have a soul and _can't_ have a soulmate), he'll protect her. He will never, ever hurt his soulmate. _No one_ will.

He'll make sure of it.

x

His mother takes him to get his timer when he's ten years old. It's a painless process—mostly because he's unconscious for it—but waking up to find his timer blank _isn't_. It's not unexpected or unusual, but still…it stings, finding _nothing_ where numbers should be.

It doesn't mean anything _bad_, exactly. It just means that his soulmate doesn't have a timer. He hopes it's because she's not old enough yet and not because she lives in a part of the world that doesn't use timers, and he clings to the fact that it's not red. If it were red, it would mean she's dead.

As long as it's not red, it only means he has to wait. He can totally wait.

Disappointment aside, it's a good day, the day he gets his timer. Just he and his mother, out in Boston together, and she's in a weirdly good—a weirdly _gentle_—mood. After he wakes up, she even takes him to get ice cream to celebrate, and when she tells him not to tell his father, there's only a very little bit of spite in her voice.

He promises her not to tell his father. (Grant tries not to talk to his father at all, if he can help it.) He also promises that he's gonna be a good soulmate—the very best.

It puts an even weirder look on his mother's face, but she doesn't get angry with him or even make fun of him. She actually _agrees_.

"Of course you will, Grant," she says, and she even sounds like she means it. She smiles, a little, but it's…sad. Kind of.

In his later years—in his more charitable moments, at least—he'll wonder what promises his father made to her, or maybe what promises she made to his father, to put that look on her face. In _this_ moment, though, he's just happy.

He's one step closer to finding his soulmate.

x

His timer clicks on when he's fourteen. It's early September, and he's in the middle of helping Thomas with his math homework (because _someone_ has to) when he hears a strange beep and looks down to see that his timer has started counting. For a few seconds, the two of them just stare—then Thomas lets out a whoop and tackles him in a hug.

"Congratulations, Grant!" he says when he lets go, all smiles. "Freaking finally, I thought that thing was gonna be blank _forever_!"

Easy for him to say; his timer started counting down the second he got it.

"Yeah, yeah," Grant says, and shoves him back into his chair, because his little brother will take any excuse he allows to get out of doing math, so he can't let this turn into a party. "Get back to work. Those fractions aren't gonna multiply themselves."

They might as well, though, for all the attention Grant pays the rest of Thomas' homework. He can't take his eyes off of his timer, the long line of numbers counting slowly down. It's probably just his imagination that his heart—pounding loudly in his ears—has started to sound like a ticking clock.

Sixteen years. He'll be thirty when he meets his soulmate, and _that_ feels like forever away, but still. He's gonna meet his soulmate, and Thomas will meet _his_, and someday they're both gonna be far away from here with girls who love them. And they _will_ love them; Grant has already promised himself that he won't ever do anything to make his soulmate hate him, and he likes to think he's done a good enough job shielding Thomas from Christian and their parents that Thomas will be good to _his_ soulmate, too.

Even knowing exactly—down to the second for the very first time—how long a wait he's got, right now it feels impossible to be anything but happy.

x

_That_ doesn't last.

He goes to military school, and he's not happy. Then he's in juvie, and he's not happy. Then he's alone in the wilderness, and he's a little bit happier, but still mostly miserable.

Through it all, there's his timer, right there on his wrist—like he's bringing his soulmate with him wherever he goes. Sometimes he just sits and watches it, watches the seconds ticking away like if he stares hard enough the years will do the same. He'll be thirty when he meets his soulmate, and sitting there at seventeen, in fucking Wyoming with no one but Buddy for company, thirty seems unbearably far away.

It's a comfort, though. He presses his fingers to the timer and imagines he feels a little warmth there, like his soulmate is doing the same thing, wherever she is. Maybe she's as desperate to meet him as he is to meet her.

…He hopes not. He hopes she's happy. He hopes she has a wonderful, loving family who have never made her feel anything less than cherished. He hopes that everything in her life is perfect, and that she looks forward to meeting him the way the girls at school looked forward to meeting _their_ soulmates: with dreams of marriage and children and happy ever after. He hopes that she _never_ has cause to cling desperately to the idea of him the way he's been desperately clinging to the idea of her.

It might be nice for his other half to be as broken and as helpless as he is (because how else could she understand him and the way he is? How else could she _want_ him?), but…he'd rather she weren't.

He'd much rather she not understand him at all.

x

He explains all of this to Buddy at great length, several times. Buddy listens patiently and rests his head on Grant's knee and, whenever Grant comes to the resigned conclusion that his soulmate probably hates him already (which, in his defense, he only does like…one time out of every three), wiggles his way into Grant's lap and refuses to be budged until Grant—beseiged by doggy kisses and demands for petting—laughingly admits defeat.

As far as company goes, Buddy's actually pretty great.

x

He's twenty when John Garrett tells him about HYDRA. HYDRA's only a vaguely familiar name, something he's read in history books (and maybe one or two of the comic books Thomas used to lend him), and at first he's a little confused, because the whole deal before John brought him out here was joining _SHIELD_, not HYDRA.

Only it turns out HYDRA is the _actual_ secret organization John works for. It's apparently spent decades operating like some secret society within SHIELD, working to either bring it down or conquer it completely, so…okay, then.

That doesn't bother him so much. It's not like he has any more attachment to SHIELD than he does, say, a random gas station they stop at on the way out of Wyoming, and it's not a surprise that John's motives aren't as pure as they appeared on the surface. He did, after all, literally _break Grant out of juvie_, which is probably not a typical SHIELD recruiting technique.

What _is_ surprising (and, honestly, fucking terrifying) is what joining up with SHIELD actually requires.

"You'll have to lose the timer," John tells him during lunch one day. They're at a diner in Arkansas, on their way to a very specific SHIELD base from which Grant can catch a flight to the Academy, and the words are so unexpected that he almost drops his fork.

"Sir?" he asks, really hoping he's misheard.

No such luck.

"SHIELD specialists do a lot of undercover work," John says with a significant look. Right, yeah, he'll be undercover doing undercover work. Awesome. "Undercover agents can't have identifying marks, and soulmate timers definitely qualify."

He pulls back his right sleeve to display empty skin at his wrist, and Grant barely holds back a cringe.

"But isn't a blank wrist just as noticeable?" he asks. He hopes this is just another one of John's tests—another instance of John saying something he doesn't mean, just to see how Grant will react and whether he'll pick out any flaws in his logic.

John gives him a lot of tests.

"SHIELD has fake timers," John says, blithely, like it's not the most chilling thing Grant's ever heard. "Depending on your cover, they'll slap one on you that's red, green, or counting down."

Grant really has no idea what to say to that, but he's pretty sure he won't be able to finish his lunch. His stomach is churning. He's carried his soulmate with him this far, and to lose his timer…it feels like abandoning her. He feels like he's caught between how much he owes John, for everything the man's done for him and how much he owes his soulmate, for everything the idea of her has meant.

He's spent five years waiting to join SHIELD. He's spent _twenty_ waiting for his soulmate.

"Is that gonna be a problem?" John demands.

Grant has already learned—and very, very well—that there's only one right answer to that question.

So he gives it. "No, sir."

x

The Ops Academy is…something. It's beyond difficult, painful and sometimes intolerable, although his years alone in the woods sure gave him a leg up on all of his classmates. There are classes on everything from weapons maintenance to disarming bombs, from foreign languages to dancing, and—when he gets further along—even seduction. It's challenging, exhausting, and, at times, downright traumatizing.

It's also a lot of fun.

After years in which he only had Buddy, his own mind, and whatever he could steal to entertain himself, Grant loves the Academy's rigorous, demanding schedule. He's at the top of his class the whole time, and he dedicates himself to staying there. It leaves no time to be bored, no time for painful self-reflection—there's barely even any time to miss Buddy (although he does, a lot). Every class he excels in sees new ones piled on him, and it only drives him forward.

All of his instructors praise his work ethic. Grant doesn't tell them that work ethic's got nothing to do with it—he's just so relieved to have something to _do_, he'd be giving a freaking gardening class his all.

The one thing he doesn't really do is make friends. His class load is a relief, but it's also exhausting—and on top of that, while wilderness survival was a great help on the physical side of things, it didn't do much for his people skills. There are several classes that help with that, and he dutifully applies his lessons to his classmates, but that makes them _marks_, not friends.

That's okay, though.

He gets along with almost everyone and never starts fights, but always ends them—and as they're being evaluated on how they relate to one another as well as their actual lessons, his success in it helps him stay at the top of his class. That's what's important.

If he ever feels lonely—not often—he contents himself with tracing his fingers along his timer, watching it count down. He'll have to give it up once he graduates, and he has no idea what happens after that. It's enough to make him sick, sometimes.

It's the only time he doubts his commitment to John's cause.

x

Grant tries not to think too much about what happened with Buddy, but dwelling or not, he learned his lesson from it. He's afraid of what John would do if he knew how much the idea of losing his timer bothers him, so he holds the question in. He waits through all of his classes and morning drills and tests and never dares to seek the answer, even as the need for it eats away at him.

He holds it in for _ages_—until the day after he graduates, when the moment comes for his timer to be removed and he finds himself alone in an exam room with a SHIELD technician named Banks.

"What's gonna happen to my soulmate's timer?" he asks quietly. He means to sound casual, but he can barely force the words out. "Will it go red?"

Banks gives him a sympathetic smile, and he figures she must get the question a lot.

"No, Agent Ward," she says (and despite his anxiety, that brand new title still gives him a thrill). "It'll just go blank, like you never had a timer at all."

He stares down at his timer, counting down: still ten years to go. "And when I meet her?"

"You'll know just by looking at her," Banks assures him, "and even if you don't, her timer will go off. You have absolutely nothing to worry about."

"Thank you," he says.

He'd like to pretend he doesn't know why his eyes are stinging, but he's going to be lying to everyone else, so he might as well be honest with himself. Whoever his soulmate is, he's been holding on to her since his timer clicked on six years ago. Everything he's been through—with his family, with John, alone in that fucking forest—he's had her with him, carrying the promise of future happiness right there on his wrist.

If there's one thing the Academy proved to him, it's that life as a specialist won't be easy. He's gonna be in no end of danger, face countless challenges and fight for his life on a regular basis. That's not really new, but…

For the first time, he won't have her with him. SHIELD is taking that promise—that _comfort_—away.

He doesn't know whether he feels more like she's abandoning him or he's abandoning her. Either way, he feels sick.

"Are you ready?" Banks asks.

He'll never be ready for this. Never.

But he's come too far—he owes John too much—to back out now.

"Yeah," he says, and watches her pick up a needle from the nearby tray.

He needs to be sedated for the removal, just like he was sedated for the installation. The difference is that installation requires sedation because it's a delicate process that can be screwed up if the recipient so much as twitches, and removal requires it because, apparently, it's unimaginably painful.

He looks back down at his timer and thinks, as the needle slides into his other arm, that it couldn't possibly be as bad as what he'll feel when he wakes up to an empty wrist.

x

In the next ten years, he experiences a lot of pain.

Nothing ever compares to that moment.

x

He goes on mission after mission, travels the world doing SHIELD's work—dirty and otherwise. Every once in a while there's a mission from HYDRA thrown in, but for the most part, SHIELD is HYDRA and HYDRA is SHIELD. It's pretty hard to tell the difference.

Specialist ops are specialist ops, no matter whose logo is on the mission file.

No matter who he's doing it for, he travels and he fights and he kills people and he steals things. He infiltrates terrorist organizations, smuggling operations, and trafficking rings, and every time he has one of the false timers placed on his wrist he feels a little bit sick.

He has less time to wonder about his soulmate now.

With the timer gone, it doesn't feel like he carries her with him the way he did before. Sometimes he even thinks it's a good thing, that it makes things easier. Thoughts of her aren't as comforting as they used to be.

When he does think of her, he can't help but wonder what _she'll_ think of _him_. He wonders who he'll meet her as—the version of him that SHIELD knows, uptight and humorless and closed off, or the version of him that's developed outside of the constraints of his constant cover.

He wonders which version she'd prefer.

Some women like the real him's (if any version of him is really real) sense of humor. Others prefer his SHIELD cover, find his standoffishness and awkward distance endearing. He doesn't—can't—know which camp his soulmate will fall into, and when he lets it, that worries him.

So he mostly doesn't let it.

As he gets closer to thirty, though, it seems more relevant: who he'll be when he meets his soulmate, what she'll think of that person, whether she'll be able to—whether she'll _want_ to—connect with him. He wonders if she'll be able to accept that he's SHIELD, whether she'll ever know that he's also HYDRA—whether it will bother her if she does. He wonders if she'll mind how much blood he has on his hands.

He's well aware that he's beyond screwed up, so mostly, he just wonders who on earth could possibly fit with him.

x

Somehow, John gets Grant onto Coulson's team. It's exactly the break they've been waiting for, because Coulson was brought back from the dead and no one's saying how. There's nothing in any of the files John can access, so their best play is to get an agent in close to Coulson, to build a relationship strong enough that he'll be willing to provide answers himself.

With the Centipede serum continuing to prove unsuitable—it is _literally_ making test subjects explode—Coulson is pretty much their best hope. Grant knows that, understands that this op is vital and a really excellent chance to finally save John's life.

He just wishes the agent on Coulson's team could be anyone but him.

His talk about working alone and teams not being his speed is designed to get under Coulson's skin, make him think Grant's someone he needs to save, but that doesn't mean he's _lying_. He _does_ work better alone, and he _doesn't_ want to be part of this team—or any team at all.

But he has his orders and he owes John everything, so he'll obey them.

x

He's told to report to hangar three and ask for Fitzsimmons, so that's exactly what he does. He was impressed when he found out Fitzsimmons was on the team—biochemist Jemma Simmons and engineer Leo Fitz, referred to in the singular (because why not, apparently), are two of SHIELD's best scientists, and it's pretty amazing Coulson managed to swing them—but he's also a little annoyed. They're not field rated, not even close, and that's gonna make his job that much harder.

Coulson isn't likely to trust him if he gets his pet scientists killed, after all, and that means protecting them's at the very top of his to-do list—which leaves that much less time for manipulating/bonding with Coulson and, therefore, will make this assignment that much longer.

So, yeah. He's not exactly overjoyed.

Anyway.

In their respective files, it is underlined and bolded that Fitz and Simmons are _not_ soulmates, but standing by, watching them, it's hard to believe. They're talking over each other, words spilling out at a rapid fire pace from both of them, and he honestly can't tell whether they're actually talking to each other or just themselves. He can't make heads or tails of it—although they seem to be doing just fine.

He's calling it now: he is gonna have a _constant_ headache around these two.

Well, at least he's allowed to be gruff with them. He drops his bag to get their attention, asks for Fitzsimmons, and hands over his comm receiver after he's been introduced. He can't help the flinch when Fitz destroys it—seriously, Grant's been accused of being rough on his tech, but he got that thing _two days ago_—but he doesn't think the two of them notice.

(Their respective field tests are probably the only tests they've ever failed in their lives, and it's now pretty obvious why. He's been here for two minutes and they've already demonstrated a stunning lack of situational awareness—he had to _drop his bag_ to get their attention, for god's sake, and neither one of them seems to have picked up on how heavily he's armed. There is absolutely no way the two of them in the field ends well.)

While Fitz picks through the rubble of the comm reciever, Simmons—who so far has proven to be bubbly and cheerful to Fitz's grumpy mumbling—hurries over to Grant and shoves a cotton swab in his mouth without asking—or even telling. She just _does_ it. She's babbling something about silicone DNA (…_what_?), and doesn't even make eye contact until she's twisting the swab back into its little tube.

"It's very…"

She trails off, eyes going wide, and he has no idea what she was about to say because he's just been (metaphorically) punched in the chest. Except not in a painful way—there's nothing violent about it.

He's suddenly imbued with warmth, radiating out from his sternum and filling his whole body, soothing away the lingering aches from his fight with Vanchat's men. It's like sinking into a warm bath after a week spent in a winter war zone, like every positive emotion he's ever felt is swamping him all at once.

The annoyance that's been itching at him over this assignment, the tension he always carries when starting a new undercover op, the lingering worry over whether this plan will even give them what they need to save John's life—all of it fades swiftly away in the wake of this new warmth. He's never felt anything like it before…but he can venture a guess.

He's thirty years old.

He barely hears a strange chiming noise and vaguely registers that Fitz is swearing, but it doesn't seem important. His entire world has narrowed to the woman in front of him.

"Oh. Hello," she says, a little faintly.

"Hi," he manages.

Numbly and slowly—like he's moving underwater—he reaches out to take her right arm (still slightly raised), and turns it over to view her wrist. As expected, her timer is green, cheerfully blinking the exact date and time at him.

He's thirty years old, and he's found his soulmate.

She's his _soulmate_. Jemma Simmons—genius prodigy, holder of two PhDs, and someone who's been evaluated at exactly .43% chance of turning to HYDRA—is his soulmate.

Well.

Shit.

* * *

A/N: Again, just in case you missed it the first time: as of February 17, 2016, this fic has been VERY recently revised. Feel free to click through to the next parts, but there will be minor inconsistencies (and a likely very noticeable change in style) between this and the unrevised parts. Just a friendly warning!


End file.
